Sylvia had rather a shock, a few days after they had reached Sirene, when she saw Miss Horne and Miss Hobart drive past on the road up to Anasirene, the green rival of Sirene among the clouds to the west of the island. She made inquiries at the pension and was informed that two sisters Miss Hobart-Horne, English millionaires many times over, had lived at Sirene these five years. Sylvia decided that it would be quite easy to avoid meeting them, and warned Olive against making friends with any of the residents, on the plea that she did not wish to meet people whom she had met here seven years ago with her husband. In the earlier part of the spring they stayed at a pension, but Sylvia found that it was difficult to escape from people there, and they moved up to Anasirene, where they took a _villino_ that was cut off from all dressed-up humanity by a sea of olives. Here it was possible to roam by paths that were not frequented save by peasants whose personalities so long attuned to earth had lost the power of detaching themselves from the landscape and did not affect the onlooker more than the movement of trees or the rustle of small beasts. Life was made up of these essentially undisturbing personalities set in a few pictures that escaped from the swift southern spring: anemones splashed out like wine upon the green corn; some girl with slanting eyes that regarded coldly a dead bird in her thin brown hand; red-beaded cherry-trees that threw shadows on the tawny wheat below; wind over the olives and the sea, wind that shook the tresses of the broom and ruffled the scarlet poppies; then suddenly the first cicala and eternal noon. It would have been hard to say how they spent these four months, Sylvia thought. "Can you bear to leave your beloved trees, your namesakes?" she asked. "Jack is getting impatient," said Olive. "Then we must fade out of Anasirene just as one by one the flowers have all faded." "I don't think I've faded much," Olive laughed. "I never felt so well in my life, thanks to you."